Facebook fails to counter COVID-19 conspiracy theories on its platforms

Facebook has vowed to deploy artificial intelligence in conjunction with human moderators to leash on conspiracy theorists using its platform to spread disinformation related to the COVID-19 vaccines. However, as per Forbe’s findings, Facebook has been unable to combat the evolving and elusive conspiracy theorists who continually use hashtags to propagate their theories. According to Forbes, “This month Facebook has been forced to block one hashtag on its own site and another on Instagram that was hugely popular among QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theory spreaders, not because moderators or Facebook AI discovered them, but after being alerted to them by Forbes.”

A Facebook spokesperson, while speaking of Facebook’s efforts to combat disinformation, told Forbes, “For years, we’ve been working to stop misinformation on Facebook by reaching as many people as possible with accurate information about vaccines, removing content that breaks our rules, and reducing the distribution of false information. We’ve banned ads that discourage people from getting vaccines and have expanded our efforts to remove Groups, Pages, and accounts that continue to spread false claims on Facebook and Instagram about Covid-19 and vaccines during the pandemic.”

Source: Forbes